What Is My Queertopia?, 2015

What Is My Queertopia? comprises a two-channel installation with an audio score. One channel of the installation will be an extended version of the animation I am presenting in the work samples. The other channel will include a slide show of archival and current images of protests and radical actions from before Stonewall and the Compton Cafeteria’s riots to more current images from protests against CeCe McDonald’s unjust arrest and incarceration here in Minnesota to Bree Newsome’s recent take down of the confederate flag outside the South Carolina statehouse. The audio score will be a collage of music and found sound from protests and activists’ speeches, such as Sylvia Rivera’s 1973 Christopher Street Liberation Day Rally speech. The installation will be projected onto a single wall. The projected video channels will be side-by-side and approximately 18”x10” each, taking up a total space of approximately 50” x 12” on the wall. I am interested in creating a somewhat intimate space with this installation where viewers can contemplate up close the topics I am presenting.

I began this project as a way of digesting and organizing my thoughts on the transformations that have been happening over the last few years in terms of the juxtaposition of gay-marriage becoming the forefront of the gay rights movement while people of color, trans people, poor people, and working class people continue to receive little acknowledgement or support from mainstream gay organizations. I am interested in creating further conversation about the radical aspects of queer history in an effort to help us move forward towards a more intersectional and radical queer future and not towards the heteronormative path gay marriage has led us.